Chalice Augmented 1. Liaising Pandora You see me hang my spirits high My dirty linen's out to dry I've sought not freedom nor espy Placating reason in the rhyme A vindication of my crime To ridicule the most sublime Is an art I wish to kill Now I'm crowning new dementia With the thorns of yesterday Liaising pandora Laureate of disarray Each eye through blindness finds its sight Each peak through valleys finds its height Each wrong through nil can make a right For nil will excavate that strain Nor subjugate the caustic pain The linen doused within the rain Again and again and again... Now I'm crowning new dementia With the thorns of yesterday Liaising pandora Laureate of disarray And I'm breathing in absentia Through the thorns of every day Liaising pandora As I drink the guilt away 2. Neuron I fear the path we walk is my decline That greater deeds, through fate, I shan't perform So long was spent defining how to shine 'Twas never learnt that rays are best when warm To ashes unfulfilled we stagger hence My neuron, my nemesis, you lead me Through every nightshade vision one can sense Inherent in my art is to feed thee Perhaps the path traversed shall never grow Yet such conjecture is naught but sorrow The greatest seed may yet be left to sow Midnight brings us closer to the morrow To ashes unfulfilled we stagger hence My neuron, my nemesis, you lead me Through every nightshade vision one can sense Inherent in my art is to feed thee This phoenix I must fly into the sun For only from my spirit do I run 3. Winter In The Desert Sky I decline April's fall High time to refine and vacate Still I'll miss such listless bliss This path was the last recourse Lucid hopes Chaos merchants Mingling thus Socialise this conscience Dream that dream Spirits will employ The slaughterhouse to guide you here Nexus to hollow lies Jaded is the ocean view Redefine your anodyne The company profits today I imbibed Every drop to survive To keep alive Lifeless wills that I scribed Elucidate When the depths take my hand Blinded by the moment I claimed this mire A refuge from amentia and an epoch of desire Labouring alone beneath the mirror of the sky Transcend this foul elixir The firmament is nigh I won't concede I am a relic of the damned I have scribed Every word to survive To keep alive Lifeless drops I've imbibed Elucidate When the depths free my hand Blinded by the moment I claimed this mire A refuge from amentia and an epoch of desire Labouring alone beneath the mirror of the sky Transcend this foul elixir The firmament is nigh I won't concede I am a relic of the damned Time conceives you like a tide within the ocean's eye All the power of a winter in the desert sky 4. Portrait Do I only have conviction When my opinion lives in isolation? Is this portion of reality A frail and tangential foundation? Who mapped the course To this quizzical, grotesque junction? I can't romanticise these demons anymore I can't serenade another empty balcony I can't endure one more eve on this fetid ship With the insincere bounty of a mutinous soul The machine grinds ever on With a radiance perceived by wretched eyes That lead me home again when I'm blinded By the truth within my lies I can't romanticise these demons anymore I can't serenade another empty balcony I can't endure one more eve on this fetid ship With the insincere bounty of a mutinous soul 5. Child Of The Matador Thirteen years Inside your play To rise one day And find you dead The world had fled With much unsaid My last paternal kiss Thirteen years I missed your touch I missed so much A life unfurled That hand you held That child you hurled Against a razor fence In mine eyes such hate did shine Devoid of knowledge, ill-defined Nurtured in protective lies There is no conquest in demise Nineteen years Outside your play I broke that day And rose to feel The distance heal Drift now in peace My last paternal kiss A life unfurled That hand you held That child you hurled Against a razor fence 6. Static I had to face you again I had to taste you once more Alone I had to hit that wall With you as my mentor And watch my wretched flesh rot Inhaling the stench of regret Feeling life stripped from my vertebrae Free in my toxin vortex Peak hour Sewer Side I had to face you again I had to taste you once more Alone I had to hit that wall With you as my mentor Rising from the bile of today I refrain from that touch Knowing I'll still feel you tomorrow 7. A Semblance Of Sanity A mighty and unprecedented thought A vagrant memory from wilderness Where the civil and the servant are sought And tracing living death is frivolous It's this I leave for you alone to press Yet comprehension I doubt for myself The cane that leads the blinded but a guess This trivial barometer of health A reckoning of sorts, 'twas left upon the shelf A tectonic fault plagues the mind of man The blameless shame of dreams undreamt within I am the echoed conflict, not the span The pleasure of the motive, then the sin Stigmata is the shepherd of the skin The cloak of greater chaos shields the sane From inertia of the linear spin The rupture of the twist imbibes the brain From where I cast the cane, so too doth come your flame A rooftop dungeon and jigsaw romance Permeates the refuge of unreason The conceptual conclave - change each stance Through varied mutations of the season By soul and mind conspiring to treason To unify and segregate as one Always is the remnant of a lesion Out frailty inherent in the sun The madness has been spun, our web design undone On gaining sanity - we think alone A mosaic of ancient hopes, we hold the chisel But we dare not touch the stone One cannot break the magic from the mould Nor know the fate of dice that haven't rolled Stack your unmatched driftwood upon the pyre Then dare to think the madness is controlled So as you pause, fool... bleeding from the wire From where you lost the flame So too doth come my fire